Tanya Monaghan

Biography

Self Biography  I came to Nottingham in 2006 and took up the position as the first NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow in Gastroenterology. Alongside clinical training, I worked in the laboratory of Professor Yash Mahida. I was subsequently awarded a Wellcome Trust Clinical Training Fellowship in 2009 to study the host immune response to C. difficile toxins A and B, the principal virulence factors involved in disease pathogenesis, and was awarded my PhD in 2013. In 2013, I commenced an NIHR Academic Clinical Lectureship in Gastroenterology in the Nottingham Digestive Diseases Biomedical Research Unit. I was awarded an Academy of Medical Sciences Starter Grant for Clinical Lecturers to study novel antimicrobial treatments for C. difficile infection (CDI), utilising a human in vitro gut model of CDI developed by Professor Mark Wilcox, University of Leeds. In collaboration with the Immunology Department at UoN and with the help of a subsequent Hermes Fellowship, I have also adapted a protein microarray platform to investigate antigen-specific antibody responses in the circulation of patients with CDI. This assay is also being used a prediction tool and has recently received a UK patent. I have established collaborations with Dr Nick Hannan, University of Nottingham to determine the utility of a human stem-cell derived intestinal organoid culture model in modelling Crohn's disease and studying C. difficile pathogenesis. We hope to use this model to develop and test new therapies for CDI and inflammatory bowel disease. I am also working closely with Dr Dina Kao at the University of Alberta to study immune mechanisms of action of faecal microbiota transplantation therapy for CDI. In 2017, I was awarded an Anne McLaren Fellowship to study Clostridium difficile infection in urbanised and tribal communities in Central India. I plan to undertake molecular epidemiological and ethnopharmacological studies with the assistance of the Central India Institutes of Medical Sciences, Mahatma Gandhi Tribal Hospital, C. difficile Ribotyping Network and School of Pharmacy, University of Nottingham. I will also work closely with Bioinformatics experts and statisticians within the Advanced Data Analysis (ADAC).

Research Interest

Development of an human stem-cell derived intestinal organoid platform to study C. difficile pathogenesis